A genuine TURKISH GIALLO
from 1967! At that time, the Italians had
just started warming up on the genre while
their best examples came years later.

This Turkish lost, spooky, misty, gothic
giallo horror stands on its own, faithful to
itself, quite original in ideas, full of
surprises and almost empty as far as
"similarities" to other films are concerned!
The only surviving print was found in very
good condition and ONAR FILMS is presenting
it in another worldwide premiere.

Onar Films is
a small company from Greece that specializes
on Turkish genre cinema. They release a
limited number of copies of each title,
numbering each on the back cover. Their
latest releases are limited to only 500
copies, such as this film - Kadın
düşmanı aka Woman Despiser.
This film from 1967 often refereed to as a
"Turkish giallo", although Italian gialli
were just starting to become popular in
Italy, peaking with Dario Argento's
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
in 1969. The stylish slasher have some
distant similarities with
Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace,
but is totally original for the times it was
made. The first 10 minutes are almost
without any dialogue and features two
gruesome murders of Turkish beauties,
featuring a killer who has fondness for
Halloween masks and necrophilia.
Unfortunately, working with Turkish cinema
can be a problem - they don't have a
preservation of older films and locating
good quality print is sometimes very hard.
With what they had to work with for this
release, Onar Films did an excellent job.
The most likely only surviving print didn't
go through costly restoration, but
progressive transfer is watchable. There are
lots of marks on the print and some damage,
one scene has some alignment issue that is
corrected after 30 seconds (see last
capture), but once again, we should feel
lucky this title survives at all - many
Turkish films from that era no longer exist,
monochrome prints were melted down to
extract silver and original negative prints
are non-existent.

The sound is
adequate and English translation is very
well made and easy to read. At one scene,
there is a 2-seconds snippet of Four Tops
singing "Reach Out I'll Be There"
on a radio. As usual for Omar Films, they
provided some interesting extras with this
film - an 11-minute 3rd part of a
documentary about Turkish Fantastic Cinema,
with some clips from other films and talking
heads of people working in the Turkish film
industry. (Part 1 is on their "Kizil tug
Cengiz han" disc and part 2 is on "Korkusuz
Kaptan Swing") Also included on the
disc are a photogallery, trailers for 4
other Onar Films DVDs, and several text
screens of biographies-filmographies for the
director Ilhan Engin and film's star Ekrem
Bora. There is also a two-page insert with a
reproduction of the film's original poster
(similar to the image on the cover). This
film is recommended for those who love
fantastic cinema and think they have seen
everything there is to see. DVD is
recommended with some reservations, but Onar
Films should be applauded to their efforts
to bring Turkish cinema into the digital
medium with such love and dedication. Check
out the trailer on YouTube and decide for
yourself if you may enjoy it
HERE.